


The Queen's Letters

by InyriAscending



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Alphabet Fic Meme, Drabble Sequence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-16
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-29 15:31:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 15,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InyriAscending/pseuds/InyriAscending
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty-six moments in Anora's life, written for the Alphabet challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A is for Arrow

**A is for Arrow**

She could scarcely draw the bow a month ago.

Now the baby fat on her arms is gone, replaced by lean muscle; her glove and armguard no longer chafe, and the deep purple welt on her forearm and split skin of her fingertips, reminders of her first stubborn attempts to go without, have finally healed.

(Father refused her requests for healing potions, and Cailan just tried to wrap her whole arm in messy poultices that smelled of herbs and sheep fat. She appreciates the effort, of course, but she had to soak her handkerchiefs in lavender water to cover the odor, even after she washed her arm.)

Her aim is better, too, and she hits the target nearly every time- sometimes nearly in the center.

Mama rests in the shade and watches, offering cool drinks and encouragement, but Mama was always a proper lady even before her sickness. Proper ladies embroider, read poetry and romances (the Orlesian ones are the best, but still banned with the war not truly over), dance galliards and branles and voltas. Proper ladies don’t practice with bow and sword and shield until their arms ache.

Anora learns the proper things, too. Cailan’s still at that gangly growing-up age- all long limbs and floppy feet like a Mabari pup- that makes dancing terribly awkward, but he tries because he knows it pleases her. She always remembers to compliment him when they’ve finished, even when he steps on her toes.

They’re old enough to mostly understand what betrothed means, now.

Betrothed means that someday, she and Cailan will be married.

“And you will be a princess,” Father says, when he kisses her forehead to bid her goodnight, “and someday after that, you will be Queen.”

So she practices, in the heat of the courtyard, her dress clinging to her back and sweat beading her forehead, launching arrow after arrow at a tattered target of paper and straw.

The Queens of Ferelden are warriors, too.


	2. B is for Blight

**B is for Blight**

 

After he is bathed and perfumed and his wounds mended, she sends the Chantry sisters away; she will finish the preparation of Father’s body herself.

Ser Cauthrien stays behind to help, even as the rest of the servants take to the river, to the ships evacuating the city in advance of the darkspawn horde. The knight slides her arms beneath Father’s shoulders and lifts, giving Anora enough room to slip the shirt over Father’s head and down over his chest.

(The easy way Cauthrien moves him, maneuvering limp hands and arms through shirtsleeves, fastening the straps and buckles of his armor, might once have made her wonder. There was a time, when she was younger and Mama still alive, when she was convinced Father had a mistress in Denerim. Why else would he leave them in Gwaren so long, even as Mother sickened and could no longer sit as teyrna in Father’s place?

Father did have a mistress, as it turned out, although it wasn’t Cauthrien.

Her name was Ferelden.)

Father looks better in his armor; the damage wrought by the duel obscured, he could be sleeping if only he weren’t so pale, so still. He has more grey hairs than she remembers.

Then again, so does she.

“Your Majesty?” Cauthrien presses his helmet into her hands, her expression somber. “The Grand Cleric is waiting.”

There is a burst of cannonfire from somewhere within the city and the rumble of falling stone- and a roar that makes her drop the helm and clutch her head in agony.

 _Maker_ _preserve_ _us_. She runs to the window; out on the far horizon the great dragon spreads its wings and screams, and the great horde below answers with a hundred thousand voices. Her fingers grip the windowsill, her knuckles blanching.

“Father was wrong.” she looks back to Cauthrien. “It is a Blight.”


	3. C is for Cailan

**C is for Cailan**

It was raining on the day Mama came to tell her the queen was dying.

It rains every day of the journey from Gwaren to Denerim, twelve days of grey skies and sodden muddy roads that leave the horses gasping every time they stop, which is often. She’d never traveled so far in a carriage before (never further than the seaside for a picnic), and the jostling of the road sets her stomach roiling; Mama braids her hair to keep it back from her face as she vomits into a basin.

When they finally arrive, Father meets them in the courtyard of the palace. She hasn’t seen him in nearly a year and runs, plaits flying behind her and hands outstretched, waiting for him to catch her up in his arms and swing her around as he does when he comes home- and he stops her with a look.

“She’s gone, Celia.”

“When?” Mama trails behind, skirting around puddles cautiously.

“Yesterday. Will you- Cailan’s upstairs with the chambermaids, but they can’t manage him, and Maric-” Father sighs. His eyes are swollen, his chin and cheeks dotted with stubble. “I’ll see to Maric.”

Mama nods, and leads her into the palace and the little prince’s suite. The first time Anora meets her husband, she is seven years old; he is three, an unbreeched boy crying for his mother.

Four hours later, though he squirms and fights the shift and skirts and jacket (prettily embroidered with the royal crest) that mark him as prince, they’ve managed to feed and bathe and dress him and finally, exhausted, he falls asleep on her lap. She combs his still-damp hair with her fingers, straightening out tangles until he shines golden in the firelight.

 _Years later, on their wedding night, he dozes with his head on her breast, half-drunk and sweat-sheened and spent; she smiles, then, and runs her fingers through his hair as she drifts to sleep._


	4. D is for Dog

**D is for Dog**

It is the custom in Ferelden, as in the rest of civilized Thedas, for a newly crowned monarch to send gifts to his freeholders and other heads of state.

Cailan, Maker bless him, sent a single Mabari puppy to every king, queen, empress, prince, viscount and teyrn on the continent. Each and every one was female, which Anora thought was a fine idea; it would leave their allies dependent on Ferelden for breeding stock, encouraging at least a modicum of diplomacy.

They were fine animals, gifts worth of royalty.

(She vetoed his first idea emphatically.

“Cheese? Honestly, Cailan, how provincial.”

“But it’s fantastic!”

He sulked at her for days.)

Two months after their coronation, the Orlesian ambassador returns from his delivery to Val Royeaux bearing a letter from the Empress and two black-and-gold masks- _when in Orlais_ , Anora whispers to Cailan through clenched teeth.

The ambassador bows and simpers, his mask a garish shade of green. The Empress had taken a great liking to the pup, it seemed, and was training it as a watchhound.  

“Has she chosen a name?” Cailan sits forward on the the throne, eager.

“Why, yes, Your Majesty.” (She suspects he’s smiling, behind the mask.) “I do believe she named the animal Moira.”

It takes all her strength to keep Cailan seated, even with her fiercest warning look.

(He worshipped his grandmother, though he’d never met her; she was long dead, her head on a pike outside the gates of Denerim, when Cailan was born. Maric- and Queen Rowan, too, she’d bet- spoke endlessly of the Rebel Queen, and he had learned all the stories of her at his mother’s breast.)

She rests her hand on his wrist and shakes her head, the gestures they’d long ago agreed meant _please shut up and let me handle this, Cailan_.

“Her Majesty, my husband’s beloved grandmother, would have been honored to be chosen as the namesake of such a fine beast.” She keeps her hands clasped at her waist to steady their trembling as she stands, letting her voice fill the room, quelling the outraged court. “Do you know much of the mabari, ambassador?”

She steps down from the dais in three quick strides and plucks the Orlesian’s mask from his face; he shakes his head, and would have backed away but for the guards now behind him.

“The mabari bitch, in particular,” she says with a smile, “is a force to be reckoned with. She is bred and raised for a single, focused purpose, which is to defend her master, kin, and country with whatever means are at her disposal.”

He swallows.

“And when you threaten a mabari,” she nods, and the guards seize his arms and start to drag him away, “you had best be prepared, lest you feel her teeth at your throat.”

She looks to Cailan as the murmurs of the crowd start to quiet. “I do believe, my husband, that we are in need of another Orlesian ambassador.”


	5. E is for Elf

**E is for Elf**  
  
She hadn’t expected her to come at all- none of Cailan’s women ever had- so the fact that the Warden-Commander of Ferelden walked, smiling, into her study was a surprise.   
  
“Hello, Anora.” The elf inclines her head, then startles and corrects herself. “Sorry- Your Majesty. I was told you wished to see me?”  
  
“Please, have a seat.” Anora gestures to the chairs near the fireplace, claiming the further one for herself. (It keeps her back to the corner, at least. She would have preferred, in most circumstances, to sit behind her desk, but this isn’t most circumstances.) “Have you found your rooms to your liking?”  
  
“They have walls, and a floor that isn’t dirt, and a ceiling that doesn’t have rain coming out of it or moss hanging down.” The other woman curls into her chair. “They’re lovely. I’m not quite sure why I need four, though.”   
  
“They were my father’s rooms- one of three suites in the palace that connect to the king’s.” She keeps her expression perfectly neutral. “The north rooms are mine, and Cailan’s last mistress had the east suite painted pink. I didn’t think it would suit you.”  
  
The Warden’s tattoos stand out dark against her flushed cheeks.  
  
“I don’t expect that we’ll be friends, but I hope I can at least rely on your discretion.”   
  
The Dalish woman glances pointedly at Anora’s wedding band. “I’m no threat to you, Anora. You’re Alistair’s wife, Alistair’s queen. Why shouldn’t we be friends?”  
  
(“But why can’t I play with them, Father?”   
  
“You’re a teyrn’s daughter, child. These are your subjects- not your friends.”)  
  
Something in her breaks, then.   
  
“Because he loves you? Because one day he’ll get a child on you and-”  
  
“No, he won’t, Anora.”  There is something in the elf’s smile she cannot decipher. “Two Grey Wardens have never produced a living child, not in a thousand years. You’re more likely to be successful on that front than me- and besides, an elf-born heir? Your nobles would no more accept than than an elvhen queen.”  
  
Anora sighs. “After five years with Cailan? I’m barren, or so the gossips say. We’ll be digging for heirs in the potato fields, like in the old stories.”  
  
“One never knows.” She shrugs. “And none of Cailan’s mistresses ever bore him a child, in all those years? I gather he had several.”  
  
“More than several,” the queen says, and for the first time she wonders, “and no, not a one.”


	6. F is for Foreign

**F is for Foreign**  
  
By the time Erlina finishes, replacing the last of the thin metal rods on the brazier, she’s nearly grown accustomed to the smell of her own burning hair and the dull scrape of hairpins.   
  
“It’s not burnt, my lady.” Her maid upends a jar of sweet-smelling powder over her head and looks alarmed when Anora sneezes. “Only heated, to keep the curls- but you mustn’t touch.”  
  
She stands and moves to her dressing-table, studying herself in the mirror. “Why, I look quite Orlesian, don’t I?” Her hair sits piled atop her head, a mass of powdered ringlets, and as she turns her head Erlina pins two huge feathers in place.   
  
(The masquerade ball was a tradition, but for the first of their reign it had been Cailan’s idea to dress as Emperor Florian and La Belle Henriette.   
  
“Even the Orlesians hated Florian,” he grins to her, “so we can’t possibly offend anyone.”  
  
“But wasn’t Henriette a whore?” She turns on her side to face him with a roll of her eyes, tugging up the coverlet against the chill winter air.  
  
“A courtesan, my dear- but yes, rather. The only other option would be to have you dress as Meghren, though, and you’re far too pretty for that.”  
  
She throws a pillow at him. “Flatterer.”)  
  
Anora sits, patient, through face powder and rouge and, silliest of all, a little velvet heart stuck with paste to her left cheek in the style of thirty years past. The outfit comes next: wide boned supports on each hip, a heavy embroidered gown (rather low on the bust compared to the high-necked styles of Ferelden- she considers, then has Erlina add a ruffled strip of lace at the neckline), high-heeled slippers.   
  
She takes up her mask and practices walking in the shoes as she waits for Cailan, pacing back and forth across the room.  
  
The door opens without a knock and she turns, surprised, to face her father.   
  
“I passed Cailan in the hall. You cannot possibly be serious about this, Anora.” He is dressed, as he has at every masquerade since her first year at court, as the Silver Knight, in a fine suit of chain and plate. “I forbid it.”  
  
“It’s a masque, Father, it’s only in fun.” She takes a step toward him and scowls as she knocks into the dressing-table, wide-hipped in her costume.  
  
“I will not have my daughter displayed in public dressed as a foreign whore- and an Orlesian?” Loghain scowls. “After everything we have suffered, you emulate them?”  
  
She pushes past him as, through the open doorway, Cailan rounds the corner toward her chambers; he catches at her wrist.   
  
“I’m not finished, daughter.”  
  
“The war is over, Father. We are at peace with Orlais.” She turns and stares until he lets her go. “And as your queen I say you will abide it.”  
  
For the first time in all her life, she finds her father at a loss for words.   
  
When she meets him in the hall Cailan sweeps into a joking bow and she takes his arm; Father’s eyes follow them all the way to the ballroom.


	7. G is for Gwaren

**G is for Gwaren**  
  
Gwaren is south of everywhere: south of the forest and the hills, south of Denerim, south of civilization.   
  
When she was younger, it didn’t matter. She and Mama walked the gardens, tending to the roses and feeding the rabbits in their little wicker-and-wire cages, worked on her lessons beneath the oak tree (the tallest tree in the city, the only one that hadn’t burned in the siege or been felled during the reconstruction). They looked out at the sea, watching the tides go out and the ships come in, hoping that today will be the day Father’s ship arrives from Denerim.   
  
Mama always loved the sea.   
  
When she was younger and Grandfather was alive she sat on the counter in his shop, watching him as he worked; his hands were nimble even as his eyesight started to fail. Father didn’t approve of it, but Mama missed her family and would take her down to the village often enough when Father wasn’t around (which was nearly always). Grandfather would carve her little animals out of stray scraps of wood, dogs and cats and stranger creatures she’s only heard of in stories, and she tucks them into her pocket when Mother comes to fetch her.  
  
(Grandfather had apprenticed to an Orlesian, as so many craftsmen had done in the days of the occupation, and his own apprentice was Antivan-born to an Orlesian mother-  it’s a long story , he said- so the language of the shop was a strange hybrid of tongues.   
  
She started to learn it, as well, and in the months before Grandfather died she would often hop down from her perch to tug on the sleeve of one of his assistants.   
  
“ _Qu'est-ce qu'il y a_ , little one?”  
  
She would point, and lisp, “Grandfather _a besoin d’aide_.”  
  
The next time Father returned, he hired a language tutor from Denerim who rid her of both the lisp and, more emphatically, the Orlesian.)  
  
When she is older, though, and especially after Mama falls ill, Anora grows to loathe Gwaren.   
  
In her last days Mama is too weak to leave her bed and the smell of poultices and incense becomes unbearable; she walks the gardens with gloves and shears, clipping basketfuls of roses from the now-overgrown bushes, and in Mama’s rooms she scatters them everywhere.   
  
As the nurse changes the linens Anora throws the shutters open and stands at the window, waiting for the wind to change and sweep the staleness from the room. Today, though, it blows from the south and fills the room with the salt-fish smell of the sea.  
  
Mama always loved the sea.  


	8. H is for Horseback

** H is for Horseback **   
  
On her twenty-second birthday she sleeps until midmorning and eats her breakfast in bed, then sits in the bath until the water goes cold and her fingertips wrinkle; when she finally emerged into her study, she finds a note from Cailan waiting on her desk.    
  
_ Anora,   
  
Meet me in the west yard at half past one- I’ve got a surprise for you. Dress warmly; it’s raining.   
  
Cailan _

  
And so it is- the glass windows are quite fogged over, and when she unshutters the proper window for a better look a few fat raindrops land on her still-damp hair. She dislikes the rain.    
  
She contemplates the note along with her choice of wardrobe (the lilac damask Erlina had set out being neither particularly warm nor waterproof), and after some thought she elects a green woolen gown in last year’s style. She’s been meaning to have it made over, anyway, so if it’s ruined by whatever grand adventure is planned it’s no great loss.   
  
(Cailan’s always been the spontaneous one, prone to dragging her on spur-of-the-moment carriage rides and picnics- and on one particularly memorable occasion, a midnight swim in the courtyard fountain.    
  
She had defended herself to Father by reporting he’d pushed her in, which was mostly true.   
  
Technically speaking he’d pulled her; she’d pushed him first.)   
  
She fastens a cloak around her shoulders, and as she makes her way through the gardens she adjusts the hood against the breeze. The location alone has her curious- there’s nothing in the west yard except storage sheds and-   
  
_ Stables. _   
  
“You’ve got to be joking, Cailan.”    
  
“Happy birthday?” He stands in the yard next to the grey palfrey, holding its reins lightly in one hand. “I thought you wanted to learn.”   
  
“I only said I was jealous, that it looked rather like fun.” She sighs, and eyes the horse- a well-bred beast by the look of it, though she’s seen so few in her life she’s a poor judge. There aren’t many left in Ferelden, not since the chevaliers withdrew. “Whose horse is this?”   
  
He gestures. “Yours, of course- birthday, and all- and of course it’s fun. That’s why I’ll teach you.”    
  
“Women don’t ride horses. It isn’t proper.”   
  
He tosses something toward her; she blinks, and reaches up to catch it. “And when, Anora mac Tir, with your bow and blade, have you ever been a proper lady?”    
  
She finds herself standing in the rain, holding a pair of padded trousers in her hands, and has to admit he has a point.    
  
“You’ll be wanting those.” Cailan grins at her, patting the horse’s neck. “You can change in the shed, if you like.”   
  
Somehow, despite her own best judgment, she does.   
  
She stands on a hay bale beside him as he checks straps and buckles and things once again; finally, he helps her fit her foot into the holder ( _ stirrup ,  Anora _ , he says) and she swings her leg around and settles into the saddle, Cailan’s hands around her waist. Steadying her body and her nerves, she sits for a while, and when she’s reasonably sure she won’t fall off she lets him take the step away and lead the horse around the yard.    
  
She sits up straight and her hood falls back and when they start to amble in circles, Cailan cheering enthusiastically, she finds that despite the mud and mist and the smell of wet horse she doesn’t much mind the rain after all.


	9. I is for Imprisoned

** I is for Imprisoned  **   
  
She cannot shake the feeling that she is the fly in the spider’s parlor, but she sits down and accepts the teacup from the maid as Arl Howe crosses the room toward her.    
  
“What an unexpected surprise,” he says, which it isn’t, of course; she had Erlina announce her visit an hour in advance, as she always does. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit, Anora?”   
  
She takes a sip of tea, the rim of the cup covering up her curling upper lip. His informality has always aggravated her, even before she was Queen and he merely Arl of Amaranthine, and now with two more titles and one fewer wife he treats her as an equal. “I’ll not dance around it. Is my father responsible for Cailan’s death?”   
  
“The darkspawn killed Cailan, girl.” Howe’s eyes dance around the room, to windows and door and paintings, everywhere except on her. “So unless you think your father’s a genlock in disguise, then-”   
  
“I’ve heard the rumors, ser. He withdrew his troops and, outnumbered, my husband died.” She takes another sip. “Or so the Grey Wardens say.”   
  
“To hell with the Wardens.” He scowls.   
  
“Do you deny it, then?” She keeps her face perfectly still, her eyes expressionless; he mustn’t see her nervousness. Erlina fidgets in the corner.    
  
Howe smirks.   
  
_ Maker’s breath, Father, what did you do? _   
  
“What exactly did you plan to do- go running to the guards and have Daddy arrested for treason? You’d have to control the guards,” he says, and flashes his signet ring in her face, “which you don’t.”   
  
“I see. I’ll take my leave, then.” She stands, sets the cup on the table with a tight little smile, smooths the wrinkles from her skirts. “Erlina, would you please tell Arl Guerrin that I’ll be visiting for dinner after all?”   
  
He stops her, one hand on her hip; she takes a step back, twisting away from him. “There’s another solution, you know. Cailan’s death was tragic, but it does leave you on the market for a husband, doesn’t it?”   
  
Anora catches up the cup and sloshes the hot tea in his face.    
  
He snarls and wipes his eyes, then slaps her, hard. Erlina screams and flees, gone into the corridor before Howe notices.    
  
“You dare strike your queen?” She edges back toward the door, little by little. “I will see you hanged for a traitor, Rendon Howe.” Someone catches her arms and she reaches, too late, for the knife tucked into her right garter.    
  
“You’ll have to catch me first,” and suddenly there’s a hand over her eyes, “Your Majesty.”


	10. J is for Jealousy

** J is for Jealousy  
**  
It was in spite of Cailan’s best efforts to the contrary that she went to their marriage bed still a maiden, so she supposes this oughtn’t have been a surprise.  
  
Kings and princes do as they please. It’s a lesson that’s been taught to her, on so many different levels, since she has lived in the palace. Cailan is sweet and brave but has never been clever, and yet he is king because of good breeding and better fortune; she advises, suggests, persuades as is necessary but in the end the decisions are his.   
  
Maric had a companion in his last years, but that was somehow different. The queen had been dead for years and no one would have faulted his remarrying, but he honored her memory and never did. The girl was pretty enough, quiet and discreet, and when Maric, too, died she simply faded back into the court milieu.   
  
Queens are queens, and whores are whores, and she thanks the Maker and her father that she finds herself on the former side of the equation.   
  
She expected that someday Cailan would take a mistress. (In retrospect, of course, he’d done so long before their wedding- she was simply rather too busy, in those first weeks afterward, playing the cat who’d eaten the canary to think much about from whence the canary had come.) This, however, is simply embarrassing.   
  
She’ll have to intervene.  
  
She isn’t doing this out of jealousy, of course. What reason has she to be jealous of an empty-headed bann’s daughter from the back end of nowhere? The fool’s started to boast, though, and now this, in the middle of the day- she will not tolerate it, and so she puts on her best furs and brushes past the guards into the king’s bedchamber.   
  
“Your Majesty-” one of the men makes a halfhearted attempt to delay her, “the king-”  
  
Cailan barely stirs, half-asleep in the rumpled bedclothes as always (one of his less endearing habits); the girl gasps, and covers her bare breasts with a pillow.   
  
“I believe your dress is on the chair, my dear,” Anora smiles and moves to the foot of the bed, “and there’s a carriage leaving for Oswin on Tuesday. I’ve taken the liberty of reserving your place.”  
  
It’s rather funny, really, watching the girl try to curtsey and dress herself at the same time.   
  
When she is gone Anora sits on the bed and shakes Cailan until he wakes; he mumbles and reaches for her, then startles when she pulls the blanket back.   
  
“Maker, Anora, I’m-”  
  
“Good afternoon, husband. Shall we chat?”


	11. K is for Kiss

** K is for Kiss **  
  
She has said these words before, when she was younger and had both more and less of an idea of what she was committing herself to; the ceremony is the same, although the name she says is different.   
  
In his golden armor and his crown, he looks so much like Cailan.  
  
He slips the little braided ring onto her finger, and again she puts aside her father’s name and colors for those of the house of Theirin. Father is dead and buried now, though, and she has no living kin left to take the bride’s cloak from her back. The Warden-Commander offered to stand in, but given that she had killed Father it somehow seemed inappropriate- Anora had asked Cauthrien instead, as the captain of her household guard, and the knight nods solemnly as she unfastens the clasp.   
  
For the second time in her life she is a woman wed. It’s a great relief when she kneels before Her Grace, when the ermine-edged mantle slips around her shoulders and her crown-  her crown, the crown she’s worn for the last six years- settles back on her brow. The off-kilter world rights itself into proper order.   
  
“People of Ferelden,” Alistair says, and takes her hand to help her up, “I give you your queen.”  
  
She bows to her subjects and smiles, then, though she knows what’s coming.   
  
“Your Majesty,” the Grand Cleric says, ”you may kiss your bride.”   
  
She closes her eyes, but she needn’t have bothered; he smells of sweet herbs where Cailan smelled of wine, and their kisses are only a little alike.  
  
This wedding feast is rather more meager than her first. Most of the roads to Denerim are still in ruin and the darkspawn seem to have eaten every cow from here to the Bannorn, but they have fish and fruit and a cellar full of wine. Her dress, too, she had refashioned from her first, carefully preserved but now too large on her after a year of war and grieving; cloth of silver is dearly bought, and perhaps the nobles will appreciate the concession.  
  
She dances, as is proper, although the music has suffered somewhat from the Blight (the court harpist had joined the miltia and died at the west gate; the lute player lived, but lost three fingers on her hand reloading a jammed ballista) and the court’s mood is somber.  
  
The wine, on the other hand, has improved with age, and she’s more than drunk her fill before they retire for the evening. By the time her ladies strip her of dress and skirts and stockings, unpin and unplait her hair and belt her robe around her waist, her head is swimming.  
  
She can hear the men coming down the hall, raucous as always, and the women usher her from the dressing room as the door bursts open and Alistair lands, rather unceremoniously, on her bedroom carpet. The party lifts them both into the bed, joking and teasing (she loses a ribbon from her sleeve, he the tie of his nightshirt), and then they are gone, and they two are alone.   
  
Alistair squirms out from the blankets almost immediately. Seen so close he’s thinner than Cailan, but broader at the shoulders and taller- but still, so similar; she resolves herself.   
  
“You’re leaving already?”    
  
“What?” He pauses, looks at her for the first time since entering the room. “You want me to stay?”  
  
She stands, sighs, walks across the room and hangs her robe on the cabinet-pull. “They’re likely all still standing out there, and if you slip away now they’ll gossip. More to the point, Alistair, you don’t have an heir, and we need to remedy that.”  
  
“I’ve only been king three weeks.”  
  
“I’m your queen.” Her earrings weigh on her lobes, forgotten in the haste of everything, and one’s gotten caught in her hair as she unfastens it. “While I’ll still be helping with governance, of course, the matter of inheritance is rather my job. The last thing I want is another crisis, if you-”   

  
He chuckles. “A cheerful topic, for a wedding night.”   
  
“I’m being serious.” Her earring untangled, she sets it aside. “This is our last chance, Alistair- yours and mine both.”   
  
“I like your hair that way, you know. You should wear it down more often.”   
  
She looks up at him. “You’re changing the subject. Thank you, though, but you know I can’t. Married women don’t wear their hair loose.”   
  
“So change the fashion.” He crosses his legs, but stays sitting on the bed. “Isn’t that what kings and queens do?”   
  
“Not really,” she says. “Mostly we do what we must, whether we like it or not.”    
  
“And that includes...”   
  
She shrugs. “Close your eyes and think of Ferelden, as they say, though it needn't be unpleasant.”   
  
He nods. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? Although I don’t think I’ll need to close my eyes.”   
  
“I can blow out the candles, if you’d prefer.”   
  
An odd expression- panic, almost?- crosses his face for a moment, and he shakes his head, emphatic. “No- leave them.”   
  
“As you like,” she says, and sits on the bed beside him, one hand on his shoulder.   
  
In point of fact, she decides much later that night, he isn’t like Cailan at all. 


	12. L is for Light

  
** L is for Light **   
  
When she and Mama pray, before they sleep, Mama always hopes that the war will truly end.    
  
Anora thought for years that it was only because, with the war over, that Father would finally come home to them. There hadn’t been a real battle in over a decade, since before she was even born- only squabbles at the borderlands and the occasional loyalist uprising- and still he stays at the king’s side. She’s terribly proud of her father, of course, but it would be ever so nice to have him at home.    
  
That isn’t why Mama wants the war to end, though.    
  
Mama reads to her from the Chant (she explains the big words, like threnodies and benediction and maleficar) and tells her stories of Andraste and the Maker, shows her the etchings of the Grand Cathedral that bridge between the sections of her book. In Val Royeaux, Mama says, they sing the Chant of Light all the way through, from the very first word to the very last.    
_  
Can you guess, my love, how long that would take? _ - Mama asks, as she pulls the blankets up to Anora’s chin against the winter chill.   
  
She bites her lower lip as she thinks.  _ Six months? _   
  
_Not quite so long as that_ ,  she laughs, and kisses her forehead.  _ It lasts two weeks, day and night, the voices of a thousand Sisters all joined together in song. I’ve always wanted to hear it, just once.  _   
_  
It sounds lovely, Mama. _   
  
They’ve never been to Val Royeaux, of course. Even before the rebellion the roads weren’t safe for Fereldens (her history books tell her, for that was before even her parents’ childhoods), with rogue chevaliers and bandits preying on the faithful. Now the roads are better but the politics are worse, and there will be no journeys to Orlais until there is peace.    
  
Real peace- Father writes to her in the long letters that stand in place of conversations, that she reads over and over, drinking the words in like water- real peace depends on treaties and embassies, on chivalry and the honor of kings and emperors, not on two armies staring at each other across a border because they’re too worn down to bother moving.    
  
So Mama prays for peace, and dreams of the Chant of Light.    
  
***   
  
Mama died, of course, long before the treaty was signed, and years later Anora has still never traveled to Orlais. There was talk, at one time, of a state visit- or was it that Celene had planned to visit Ferelden? She can’t remember, really. It seems so long ago.    
  
When she finds the letters on her writing-desk, then, she cannot place them- four pages, three yellow with age and folded, the first newer and still crisp, the ink still faintly tacky to touch.    
  
_ He didn’t want you to see these. Finders keepers, though.   
I’m sorry about your father.  _   
  
She reads the first sheet three times before it makes any sort of sense. The handwriting is sprawling, almost childish; the only signature is a little drawing, a winged lion.    
  
No.    
  
A griffon.    
  
The other letters are all addressed to Cailan, all signed. She had known about the negotiations with Celene, the attempts to bring more soldiers to the battlefield that Father had so vehemently opposed. He was so paranoid, in those last months, so utterly convinced that Cailan had a more permanent alliance planned with the Orlesians, something that would undo his life’s work.    
  
Permanent alliance, indeed. She should consider herself fortunate, she supposes, that Eamon allowed Alistair to marry her at all instead of shipping the poor fool to Val Royeaux- well, no matter.   
  
She entertains the idea of casting the letters into the fire, as one does when one finds a poisonous thing in one’s grasp, but in the end she tucks them away in the back of her drawer. They may be useful if Eamon starts to agitate again, as she has no doubt he will. It’s a blessing he hasn’t any daughters.   
  
Anora is thirty years old, and she has never been to Orlais, never heard the Chant sung- and now, she does not believe she ever will.    



	13. M is for Memory

** M is for Memory **   
  
He has told her stories of battle since she was old enough to sit on his knee, but she has never seen him fight until today.    
  
Cauthrien is nowhere to be found when they begin to prepare for the duel- one more traitor, like as not, in the line that began with Anora herself; one of the palace guards stands behind Father, adjusting his armor, as another fastens his shield onto his arm.   
  
_ “There were two armies approaching the camp,” Father said, and moved the toy soldiers around on the table, “from the north and south, and King Maric and the rest of us all trapped in the middle. He wanted to stay, let the rest of us escape, but of course if the king was to be captured-”   
  
“The war would be over. How did he get away?” She reaches out, picks up the little crowned figure.    
  
He pushes her hand back to the table. “He didn’t. I borrowed his armor and rode north, followed by most of the northern army,” Father smiles, and knocks over the top row of soldiers. “Divide and conquer, my love.” _   
  
The elf woman paces back and forth at the other end of the chamber, hands on the hilts of her daggers, her lips moving soundlessly. Her armor is much lighter than Father’s, her arms unshielded; as they approach each other, it’s clear she’s almost a foot shorter than Father and perhaps half his weight.     
  
Alistair, standing off to the side and barely restrained by a greying woman in mage’s robes and a flame-haired archer, looks decidedly worried. He ought to, she supposes.    
  
This is likely to be a slaughter.   
  
_ She sits on his shoulders, looking out over the sea. “Was there ever a battle here, Father?”   
  
“In Gwaren? Oh, yes. We were outnumbered five to one, the battlefield marshy and the sea at our backs.”    
  
“But you won, didn’t you?”   
  
He turns, pointing to the narrow streets of the town center. “We hid on every rooftop, in every alleyway. They came hunting for us, and we penned them in like cattle, drove them into the water. We used the terrain to our advantage.” _   
  
They circle and circle and circle, testing and feinting for long minutes before Father lashes out with his shield- and hits only empty space, as she slips her offhand blade behind the shield’s edge and yanks forward. He stumbles forward as she slashes and then withdraws, pausing barely out of range.    
  
A thin line of blood wells up at the back of his neck.    
  
_ The palace had a little museum in the south wing, mostly dwarven artifacts and a few shards of glass rumored to have come from Arlathan. She runs her hands over a copper urn, the etchings rough under her hands. “Tell me about the Deep Roads, Father.”   
  
“They’re dark, girl, and full of darkspawn. What more do you want to know?”   
  
“Did an elf really show you the way out? Was she a servant?” She looks up at Father. “What happened to her?”   
  
He turns on his heel and leaves the room; they never speak of it again.  _   
  
Her fists are clenched. Anora forces them open, rubs her hands together until the crescent marks on her palms fade. This is taking far too long.    
  
The Warden’s pace hasn’t slackened at all, though she has blood streaming from a long cut beneath her collarbone and another on her forearm; she darts in and out, working at the gaps in his armor. When Father brings his blade down, it sings through empty air in the space where the elf no longer stands.    
  
He swears- Father never swore, not in public- and pivots, his opponent already worrying at his back.    
  
_ There were two battles at the rivers that year, and they say the water was unfit to drink for months as the bodies caught against the dams and rotted there.    
  
Father never tells her stories of the first battle and she never asks. For years, even the king went pale and silent when they spoke of White River- so many dead, she knows, and nearly every bann and teyrn alive had either survived it or inherited because of it.    
  
He spoke of the River Dane, though, with his chin held high, and there are days when she finds him in his study, sitting and staring at the Orlesian commander’s armor on its wooden stand.   
  
Lately, there have been a great many of those days. _   
  
The Warden is tearing him apart, cut by cut, and finally she gets behind him and he turns, too slow-   
  
His sword falls from his hand and clatters on the floor.    
  
She barely hears what happens afterward. She should have thought of this in advance, Maker damn them, should have planned for this in their negotiations. He is a traitor, a regicide, responsible for the sack of Lothering and the deaths of thousands, of tens of thousands- and he is her father, and the greatest hero Ferelden ever had.   
  
When Father is dead the Warden turns to her and nods, and there is blood on both of their faces, on both of their hands.


	14. N is for Nemesis

** N is for Nemesis **   
  
As much as she hated Gwaren, she knew where she stood in its hierarchy.    
  
It was just her and Mama in the palace in Gwaren, especially in that last year- there were few nobles in the town to begin with, and even fewer with the teyrn always away and the teyrna abed, dying. She spent most of her time with Mother Sophie, or her tutor, or Mama’s chambermaids; she was the lady of the house, in fact if not in name, and did as she wished.   
  
In Denerim, she doesn’t fit in at all. There are so many people in the palace here, so many nobles and their simpering wives, quarrelsome sons and empty-headed daughters all fighting for the favor of the king, and every single one of them would love to see her fall.    
  
The girls, especially, whisper as she passes.   
  
She is the crown prince’s betrothed, and someday she will be queen. For now, though, she is a common-born girl (even if Father is the king’s most trusted advisor and a noble, now, it doesn’t change the fact that her grandfathers were a farmer-turned-outlaw and a cabinetmaker) with a spotty chin who plays with swords.    
  
(She is too busy with the training dummy to notice that everyone else has stopped, and only when the weaponsmaster clears his throat does she turn around.   
  
King Maric stands in the doorway of the salle; she cannot curtsey well with a blade in her hand and so she kneels.    
  
“Your Majesty.”   
  
“You’re your father’s daughter in truth, my girl.” He laughs, and motions her to her feet. “Show me that strike again.”)   
  
She is gangly, awkward, unladylike, indelicate; Anora has heard all the words so many times, and so many others less polite and spoken more quietly. Only some of them are true. She’s grown out of her dresses twice in the last year, and as she descends the stairs to the dining room she pulls at her sleeves- too short, again. She’ll have to ask Father to send for the tailors in the morning.    
  
Cailan is waiting at the door to escort her in to dinner, scrubbed pink and shining after his earlier misadventure with the inkwell (she  _told_ him not to turn it over, just to add a little water instead, but he was quite insistent). He holds out his hand to her, grinning, and they start into the room-   
  
-and she stumbles over someone’s outstretched foot,  and falls flat on her face between the two long tables.    
  
The room goes silent as Cailan crouches next to her. She’s lost a slipper beneath the bench, and when she sits up the blood runs from her nose to stain the front of her gown. There is someone laughing, to her right, but when she turns her head to look her eyes blur with tears.   
  
“Stupid commoner,” a voice hisses, just loud enough, “can’t even walk properly.”   
  
She feels suddenly, terribly nauseous, shakes Cailan’s hand off her shoulder and goes running, barefoot, all the way back to her rooms.    
  
When Father finds her, she is sitting in her bedroom in her undershift, pinching her nose with one hand and prodding at the fire with the cast-iron poker. The dress burns merrily. She doesn’t look up.    
  
“Anora, are you all right?”    
  
She doesn’t answer, but when he sits down beside her she sets the poker on the hearth and rests her head on his shoulder. 


	15. O is for Ogre

** O is for Ogre **   
  
As it turns out, there are no entrances to the Deep Roads in the cellars of the royal palace; despite their thorough investigations they haven’t discovered a single one.    
  
There is, however, a great deal of wine.   
  
“I can’t drink this, Cailan. It’s got glass in it.” She squints through the dust at Cailan as she leans against the cellar wall. “Are you sure you’re doing that right?”   
  
“Of course I’m sure.” He holds another bottle in one hand, his sword in the other, runs the blade along the bottle’s neck and taps. It shatters in his hand. “Damn it all- I don’t suppose this one will do, either.”   
  
She sighs. “Why can’t you just open it normally?”   
  
“I’m practicing!”    
  
“What kind of champagne is that, anyway?” She sets her broken-necked bottle aside, next to the two they’ve already emptied; she leans a little too far and her crate-seat wobbles beneath her. “It looks sort of reddish- oh, Maker help us, you haven’t cut yourself? The tournament’s tomorrow, Cailan, Master Giron’s going to murder you.”   
  
He pushes up his shirtsleeve and runs his tongue along his arm, from elbow to wrist. “Mm. Not unless I’ve started bleeding beaujolais.”   
  
“You know you can’t sabre a wine bottle, yes?”    
  
Cailan pauses, pushes a lock of hair from his eyes; at thirteen he is ganglier than ever, taller every day in a way that reminds her very much of a particularly awkward and self-conscious plant. “Of course I know.” He throws the remains of the bottle against the far wall. “Obviously.”   
  
“Don’t be cross.” When she stands up she is unsteady on her feet, (one would think, that after drinking small beer or wine with every meal since she could hold a cup, she would have built up a tolerance- one would be incorrect) and she counts the shelves that she braces herself against. The rows of bottles are cool beneath her fingertips.    
  
“I wouldn’t be cross,” he says, and licks the last few drops from his hand, “if you wouldn’t nag.”   
  
Her hand closes around a loose cork at the back of one shelf; she flings it at him. “You take that back, Cailan Theirin.”   
  
“I won’t, either.” He bats the cork out of the air with the sword. “You nag like a Reverend Mother.”    
  
Anora scowls, peering toward the back of one rack, then turns back to him. “Give me the sword for a moment, would you?”   
  
“Think you can do better, Your Grace?” He turns the blade, offering her the hilt.   
  
“Not really,” she says, setting the blade down carefully, “I just wanted to get it out of your hand.”   
  
He still has the same confused look on his face when she tackles him into the wall.   
  
“Take it back!”   
  
“I won’t!”    
  
He catches a fistful of hair and pulls; she knees him in the groin, and the two of them go tumbling one over the other across the cellar floor until they collide with one of the shelves hard enough to rattle the bottles.   
  
_ Creak-  _   
  
“What was-”    
  
_ Creak.  _   
  
Cailan covers her head with his arms as the entire rack comes crashing down on top of them.    
  
When the guards find them five minutes later, they are surrounded by broken bottles,  drenched in wine, and laughing hysterically.    
  
“What in the Maker’s name happened here?” The wine steward stands, arms crossed, glowering down at them.  Anora turns to Cailan and bites her lip, then looks up at the steward with eyes wide.    
  
“An ogre,” she says, and Cailan nods agreement. “It was an ogre.”


	16. P is for Privacy

** P is for Privacy **   
  
Perhaps, if things had fallen out differently and they had the luxury of time, if she could have practiced as a princess before she had no choice but to be queen, she would be used to the constant scrutiny.    
  
As it is, she wakes up every morning prepared for a peculiar sort of battle.   
  
It could have been worse, of course- she heard a story, when she was a child, about a long-dead empress of Orlais. Orlesian royals, or so the story went, are apparently too important to deign to accept clothing from the hands of a servant and so are dressed by lower-ranking nobles. The empress, on a cold day in the middle of winter, stood completely naked in her bedchamber for forty-five minutes while eight different princesses argued about who would have the privilege of handing Her Imperial Majesty her undergarments.   
  
It is bad enough that someone has to hand her her underthings, that she is expected to wear the corsets and gowns expected of a queen instead of the simple things she preferred in childhood or the armor that sits unused in her wardrobe. It is bad enough that she must wear her hair in the pinned braids of a married woman, a style both unflattering and impossible to manage on one’s own, leaving her head aching at the end of the day from the tight grip of a dozen hairpins.    
  
After two years of marriage she’s become accustomed to all of these things.    
  
It has been two years, though, and still she isn’t pregnant, and the scrutiny placed on her makes her want to scream.   
  
Father means well, of course, but the kingdom needs an heir and the weight of that responsibility rests heavy in her empty womb.    
  
(He asked her once if she was quite sure they were trying often enough; was she quite sure that Cailan was- Maker help him- performing adequately.    
  
She gaped at him in horror and fled the room. One doesn’t  _ talk _ about that sort of thing with one’s father- it was worse than when she was fourteen and woke to bloodstained sheets, convinced that she was dying just like Mama had died, and after an hour of trying unsuccessfully to calm her Father sent for a lay sister who explained the whole business.)   
  
Even her monthly courses are subject to the judgment of the courtiers. Her maids gossip like fishwives and she’s given up trying to silence them; more to the point, it’s impossible to hide the evidence: the basket of rags tucked into the corner of the garderobe and in the little cabinet that hides the chamber pot, her cautious gait and dark skirts, the king’s absence from her bed.   
  
She accepts all the well-meaning advice, the bitter-tasting teas and herbs that she chokes down day after day, the pious prayers of every noble’s wife with a half-dozen squalling children clinging to her skirts. She accepts these things because she must, because their sympathies are as important to her position as the crown on her brow.   
  
Every month she bleeds is another month passing, another month older, and she knows what happens to barren queens. 


	17. Q is for Queen

** Q is for Queen **   
  
They’ve had three ravens land before breakfast, but the spymaster is nowhere to be found. She nibbles at her toast, anxious, and sends her egg back to the kitchens three times before she finds one done to her liking.    
  
It’s never a good sign when the messages come after the rashers.    
  
Cailan, for his part, halfheartedly surveys the monthly bann reports over a mouthful of bacon. “These don’t make any sense, Anora. How long until Father’s back from Wycome?”   
  
“It’s only been three weeks.” The eggshell shatters under her knife. “He’s likely barely arrived, although I’m surprised we haven’t had news of him. I suppose he’s busy getting the Marchers to talk to each other.”    
  
“Mmph.” He sighs. “And the tax writs are due on Friday.”   
  
She reaches for the saltshaker. “Wednesday, and you still haven’t gone over the final menu for the wedding banquet, either.”   
  
“I’m not cut out for this.”   
  
“You don’t have a choice, Cailan.  Have my father help you.” Maric’s seal sits on the table between them; she nudges it toward his hand. “Consider this a rehearsal for the future. You’ll be king sooner or later, you know.”   
  
His chair scrapes along the floor as he moves alongside her and settles his head on her shoulder, knocking over the seal with a flick of his index finger. “Much later, Maker willing. Can’t you do it? You’re ever so much cleverer at it than I am.”   
  
“Not until we’re wed.” She smiles, and sets down her spoon to ruffle his hair. “And only then if the king permits it, but let that be your incentive to finish-” she taps his ear, “reviewing the menu.”   
  
“Slavedriver.”   
  
There is a clamor at the door and the little black-clad spymaster slips into the room, a sheaf of papers clutched in one hand. He looks, Anora thinks, decidedly pale.   
  
“Your Highness,” he shuts the door abruptly behind him, “I must speak with you in private.”   
  
“If you’ll pardon me, then,” she says as Cailan sits upright; she slides her chair back from the table and moves to stand.   
  
He rests his hand on hers. “No. She stays, Master Amilcar- she’ll be princess soon enough, and I would have her hear this news of yours.”   
  
She squeezes his fingers in approval, and settles back into her seat.   
  
“As you say, Highness.” The Antivan’s expression is grave, his hand unsteady as he sets the papers on the table before them. “We have had news from Wycome.”   
  
Cailan nods. “Indeed? Has my father arrived safely, then?”   
  
“I am afraid that his Majesty’s ship did not reach the Free Marches.” He swallows.   
  
“Bad weather, no doubt. But you do have news, of course.”   
  
He shakes his head. “There have been no sightings of the  _ Rebel Queen _ for nearly a week. We’ve sent messages to every port and every fishing and trade vessel within hailing range, and still we have no news.”   
  
“Then, where-” His expression confused, Cailan looks to her. “There’s nothing between here and the Marches but the sea.”   
  
She feels the blood draining from her face.    
  
“As you say,” says the spymaster, and bows, “your Majesty.”


	18. R is for Rescue

** R is for Rescue **  
  
When she runs her tongue across her upper teeth she can taste blood.  
  
He  _hit_ her.   
  
There are no windows and only one door in this room and the door won’t open, no matter how hard she throws herself against it; on her third try something shimmers around the doorframe and sends her flying across the room. Her back strikes the desk against the far wall and she lands, sprawling and undignified, on the cold marble tiles.   
  
No one hits her. 

Anora folds her legs beneath her as she thinks. She can hear Arl Howe and another man- the mage, she’d guess, who’s bespelled the door- talking, their voices growing more distant until they fade away entirely. They intend to leave her here, then, at least for now. She has time to plan.   
  
Her knife is gone, seized by the guards who held her wrists and covered her eyes and pushed her into this room. She’ll need a weapon if she’s to defend herself when they return- she does not know what precisely Howe has planned, but it probably isn’t pleasant. His late wife, they say, died of spite.  
  
(She is reminded, suddenly, of an overwrought and overused phrase from the Orlesian romances she loved so dearly in her younger years.   
  
“ _I would rather die than submit to you, monsieur_ ,” said the helpless maiden so often to the menacing chevalier, or the trembling shepherdess to the dashing bandit, or a hundred equally unlikely permutations. They never really meant it, of course.   
  
She means it, and hopes rather desperately she won’t need to show him just how much if she cannot strike at him directly. There is still a great deal she needs to do.)  
  
This room must belong to a guardsman; there’s hardly anything in the wardrobe but a set of simple armor, not even a simple sword or a knife, and nothing else to be found but a small mirror hanging over the desk.   
  
It will have to serve.   
  
She picks up the guardsman’s helmet and strikes it against the mirror until shards of glass fall onto the desk. Sorting through them until she finds one shard large enough and sharp-edged enough to serve her purpose, she cuts and tears a wide strip of linen from her underdress and wraps the shard’s base. It’s too light, too fragile really, but it’s better than nothing.   
  
His armor leaves his throat bare, and the glass is sharp.  
  
After a moment’s thought she dons the guard’s armor as well, in case Erlina does not return and Howe- or Father, Andraste have mercy- means to kill rather than imprison her. The breastplate is too large and the greaves rather too long, though the helmet fits securely enough over her braids.   
  
It will turn a blade once, perhaps twice, which might be enough.   
  
She turns the mirror shard over in her hands, again and again, staring at the door for what seems like hours.  
  
“My lady, I am here.”  _ Erlina. Thank the maker. _  
  
Outside, someone curses as the shimmering wall flares and snaps back into place. “Magic. Wynne, can you-”  
  
“No, we’ll have to-”  
  
Erlina whispers over the other voices. “I’ve brought the Wardens, my lady. I believe they can be trusted, and Arl Eamon has agreed to provide hospitality if we can reach his estate.”  
  
There is no love lost between Eamon and her father- she always assumed it has something to do with the late queen, but Anora was just a child when Rowan died and since then no one speaks of her. She has never trusted Eamon, but she can’t trust Father anymore either; with what she now knows of the two, the arl is likely the one who won’t be trying to kill her any time soon.   
  
They wait, she and Erlina, one on each side of the door, for the Warden and Maric’s bastard and their companions to return from the dungeons. Even when the magical barrier flickers and dies she keeps the mirror-shard in her hand and the armor on.  
  
The door opens.   
  
The female Warden is small, delicately framed and tattooed in the way of the Dalish- or, at least, Anora assumes that is what’s hiding behind the blood smeared across the woman’s face. The elf extends her arm toward her, hand closed around an ornately engraved axe marked with the seal of Denerim.   
  
“I brought you a present.” Her grin is decidedly feral.   
  
Anora lets the shard drop, falling to the ground behind her; she crushes it under her heel, then reaches out to take the weapon. “Thank you.”


	19. S is for Soldiers

**** S is for Soldiers ** **   
  
There are darkspawn along the borders of the Korcari Wilds, prowling the outskirts of villages and the caravans along the kingsroad; she has had ravens or riders from the southlands every day since Cailan marched. There have always been sightings of the creatures, near the old paths to the Deep Roads, but they have grown too frequent in the last months. The common folk, the guard-captain says, whisper of blights and archdemons.

She cannot spare the time to think of it; she is too busy scrambling to placate the frantic nobles after the massacre at Highever.    
  
Political maneuvering is one thing- Maker knows she’s done her share of it in the years since Maric’s death, securing the old alliances- but she doesn’t believe for a moment that Howe happened upon the castle just after a bandit raid. The armies are gathered at Ostagar, though, Cailan and Father and the Grey Wardens and all, and the darkspawn marching ever closer.    
  
Perhaps today will be the day they fight.    
  
Erlina braids a black ribbon into her hair and powders over the circles beneath her eyes.   
  
“It seems bad luck,” she says, and looks at the maid’s reflection in her mirror, “to be mourning even before the battle starts.”   
  
The elf nods solemnly. “Were you quite close to the Couslands?”   
  
“Not especially.” Anora shakes her head. “But Oren would have been Cailan’s squire in a year or two, though I’m not sure he had the temperament for it. He was a scholar, not a soldier. He took after his mother- oh, damn it all.” Her eyes are stinging; she reaches for a clean handkerchief and cannot find one, so she settles for the unused corner of the one clenched in her fist.    
  
“His father is at Ostagar, yes?”    
  
She shrugs, waving her hand at the parchment sitting, rolled up, on her desk. “He was marching there, or so Father said in his last message. They aren’t going to tell him until after the battle.” Her lip curls. “They need him, and his army, to fight darkspawn.”   
  
She swivels on her low stool; Erlina stoops to fasten her garters and slides her slippers onto her feet.    
  
“Andraste’s mercy, I’ll be glad when the battle’s won and we can settle this wretched business.” She stands, spine straight, chin lifted. “With whom am I breakfasting today?”   
  
Erlina presses the day’s folio into her hand as they leave her rooms, making their way toward the solar. “With the Nevarran ambassador, my lady, regarding the metal imports for the treasury.”   
  
“Of course.” She pauses. “Have the cook keep back the fish course, then. Mistress Pentaghast could never abide it.”   
  
“As you say, my lady.” Erlina disappears down the corridor.    
  
Anora settles herself at the dining table. She loathes these early morning meetings, the sun barely risen and the room still lit by torches, and the wretched ambassador’s late to boot- one of the footman hands her a cup of tea and she sips at it idly as she reviews the proposed agreement.    
  
For a moment she is terribly dizzy, with a fierce sharp pain in her head and chest as though someone took her body between their hands and  _ squeezed _ , ever so hard, and she is suddenly cold; she cries out, and the teacup falls from her grip and shatters on the table-   
  
“Your Majesty!” The guards are in the room in a bare moment, Erlina close on their heels. “My lady, are you well?”   
  
Outside the sun is rising as she blinks, and looks down at the table in bewilderment. “I feel,” she says, “as though someone walked over my grave.” 


	20. T is for Tree

** T is for Tree **   
  
She last wore white when Queen Rowan died.    
  
She hates white. It makes her look pale and ill, but white has been the color of mourning in Ferelden since the days of Calenhad and so she puts on the dress that’s been hanging in the wardrobe for months. The seamstress made four gowns in the same style at her last visit, her first real ladylike dresses of ribbon-trimmed silk instead of the linens and wools of childhood; when the first, the purple one she’d begged for, was finished Anora tried it on in front of Mama, dancing and twirling in the sleek skirts in the middle of Mama’s sickroom.    
  
Mama never saw the white one, of course, though it was made at her request- and she never will.    
  
The Revered Mother chants and prays over the little urn full of Mama’s ashes as Anora stands on the dais next to Father, clutching her candle and trying to breathe through the cloying scent of incense. By the time the ceremony draws to a close she is dizzy and nauseous, and rocks from foot to foot until Father pinches her arm sharply.    
  
“Stand still, girl.” He mutters at her out of the corner of his mouth.    
  
She almost sticks out her tongue at him, but thinks better of it. She’s too old for such childishness now, especially standing in the shadow of the great golden statue of Andraste; Mama would have been ever so cross with her for disrespecting the Maker and his Bride.   
  
So instead of making faces at Father, she stands still for the rest of the funeral rites and thinks of Mama, her perfect lovely Mama, strong and healthy and well after years of sickness had worn her away to sallow skin and fragile bones, sitting peacefully at the Maker’s feet.   
  
They lay Mama’s ashes in the vault next to Grandfather’s, their candles extinguished and bouquets of flowers set outside the heavy stone door, and Anora feels tears welling in the corners of her eyes; she hasn’t had a chance to cry since Mama died.    
  
(She’s barely woken for days, now, and Anora and Mama’s maid take turns spooning little bits of broth into her mouth; when she does wake, she calls out for Father. The Reverend Mother has come and gone with her blessed oils and incense, leaving Mama with a kiss and a holy sigil traced on her forehead.    
  
There is nothing more to be done.   
  
Anora has written to Father four times in the last month, each letter more desperate and less coherent and each without reply until finally, a response- from an anonymous palace scribe, that  _ Teyrn Loghain has returned from Antiva and may be expected in Gwaren within the week. _   
  
When he finally arrives it is nighttime, and Father goes straight to Mama’s chambers without announcing himself or waking her; when he leaves Mama’s chambers, Anora learns later, she is dead.    
  
Her governess shakes her awake and dresses her hurriedly, and even then she can hear Mama’s maids crying in the corridor-  something bad has happened , she guesses, and runs out the door, her governess at her heels. She collides with Father halfway down the hall.    
  
He grabs her by the shoulders as she struggles to move past.    
  
“Mama! Is Mama alright?”    
  
“Anora, where are your manners?” Her nursemaid tweaks one of her braids, hard enough that she winces. “Say hello to your father, girl.”)   
  
After it is over they walk to the front of the chantry, to meet the crowd of mourners gathered to pay their respects. Her vision blurs. She can’t stand it.    
  
She excuses herself to the garderobe, and before anyone can follow she slips out the chantry door and runs, runs, runs to her favorite tree, the great old oak that looks out over the water. Her dress is too narrow and her boots too slick-soled for tree-climbing; she slips out of her shoes and stockings and grabs the hem of the dress, tearing it to the thigh. The knots and branches of the tree pass, familiar, under her hands as she climbs.    
  
The water is peaceful today, though it hasn’t any right to be. Mama always loved the sea and now Mama is gone- it should be raining, grey-skied and stormy-sea’d, but the sky is clear and the ocean calm. Anora stares out at the passing ships and blows her nose into her sleeve.    
  
It’s nearly sundown before anyone comes searching for her.    
  
Father stands at the foot of the tree, looking down the hill toward the docks, and calls back over his shoulder. “I don’t see her. Have every ship in port searched, just in case.” Someone out of her eyeshot yells assent as Father sighs. “Andraste’s tits, my wife dead and my daughter missing- I should have stayed in Denerim.”   
  
She scowls down at him and loses her temper quite entirely. “Well, then, why don’t you just go back there?” Her hand closes around an acorn; she wings it toward his head.    
  
He yelps, and peers up through the leaves. “Anora mac Tir, come down out of that tree at once.”   
  
“I won’t.”   
  
“I won’t ask again, Anora. We were due at dinner hours ago, and instead I’ve been scouring the city assuming you’d been kidnapped or worse!” Father reaches up toward her foot but can’t quite reach. “Do as you’re bid, girl.”   
  
She throws another acorn at him. “Like you did when Mama wanted you to come home?”   
  
“I was on the king’s business, and returned as soon as I was able.” His arms fold across his chest. “I understand that you’re upset, but-”   
  
“I hate you!” It comes out somewhere between a scream and a howl. She tries to climb higher but her foot slips through the branches and she goes tumbling down, too fast to even cry out; somehow, Father catches her before she hits the ground.    
  
She beats against his chest with her fists.

“I don’t believe that you mean that.”

“Mama needed you and you weren’t here.” She’s crying again, now. “Let me go.”   
  
“I’m here now.” He wraps her up tight, arms around her shoulders until she stills. “You’re my daughter, Anora. I won’t ever let you go.”


	21. U is for Unexpected

**U is for Unexpected**  
  
Her belly aches from retching, her throat worn raw from the constant roil of acid; she curls up on one side, with the sheet cool against her cheek and a little porcelain bowl within reach on the bedside table.   
  
“I will never, ever, as the Maker is my witness,” she mutters, “eat clams again.”  
  
Anora lifts her head half-heartedly at a chuckle from the doorway, where the Warden-Commander stands clutching a teapot and cup. “I told you not to eat anything that came out of the lake, you know. They threw near a thousand darkspawn corpses into the water before I stopped them. That water won’t be safe for years.”  
  
“I know.” Anora sighs- and reaches for the basin again. “But I was having such a craving. Are any of the others still ill?”  
  
The elf shakes her head. “All recovered, except for you. I brought you some tea.” She lifts the teapot in one hand.  
  
“No, thank you. I’ve had nothing but tea and bread for ages.”   
  
“You haven’t had this.” She pours a cupful and perches on the side of the bed. “Keeper Marethari taught me the recipe when I was da’len; it’s simple, really, a few garden herbs. Good for stomach sickness. Elyana drank it for months, when she- hm.” For a moment the Warden’s eyes go vague and distant, and when she shakes her head her hair falls forward over her eyes. “How long have you been ill, exactly?”  
  
Anora considers, and reaches out her hand to take the cup, as she lifts herself to sit half-propped on a small mountain of pillows. “Near two weeks. Long enough.” She takes a tentative sip, then pauses. “You aren’t trying to poison me, I hope.”  
  
The other woman snorts, one eyebrow raised. “If I was trying to poison you, Anora, you’d be dead. Drink your tea.”  
  
“I suppose you have a point.” She sniffs- it _smells_ good, at least, and when she drinks it tastes of mint and sweet citrus and spices. “Mm. I almost feel better already. You’ll have to write- ah, I’ll have Erlina transcribe the recipe, if you wouldn’t mind?”  
  
(A month after the Blight, she had asked the Warden-Commander to draw up an invoice for all the equipment Father had destroyed. Two months later she still hadn’t received the document, and it took another two weeks of maneuvering before Anora learned why.   
  
“You should have asked me,” Alistair told her that night.   
  
She scowls, pulling her robe around her shoulders. “The bannorn won’t agree to reparations if the request comes from you. It needs to come from the Wardens directly, without any evidence of our involvement.”  
  
“Send her a scribe, then.”  
  
“She can’t write it herself?” Her hand on the door, she pauses and turns back toward him.   
  
He looks up at her from the bed, hair mussed and eyes tired, and sighs. “She’s Dalish, Anora. No, she can’t.”  
  
She reassigns a junior undersecretary the following day.)  
  
“I’d be happy to copy it for you.” The Warden’s expression doesn’t change, though the tips of her ears color ever so slightly. “I’ve been practicing. With Alistair gone to Highever for the inspection, he’s asked that I update him weekly until he returns.”  
  
She nods and smiles until another wave of nausea takes her; she’s barely able to grasp the bowl, and Mahariel’s hands hold her hair back as she coughs and gags. When she looks up again, she finds the elf regarding her, head tilted.  
  
“Anora, may I ask you a personal question?”   
  
Anora wipes her mouth on her last clean handkerchief. “Mmph.”  
  
“When did you last bleed?” The elf crosses the room and empties the bowl into the chamber pot.  
  
She blinks. “Maker, that is rather personal- oh, dear.” With a frantic gesture, she waves her back across the room just in time to vomit once more.   
  
They sit, waiting together, until her stomach calms, and the Warden rests a cool cloth across her forehead.  
  
“It was just before the Summerday festival.” She counts the days in her head. “Four weeks- no.”  
  
Wordlessly, Mahariel refills the teacup and raises it to Anora’s mouth; she takes a long sip, and rests one hand on her belly.  
  
“Six weeks.”


	22. V is for Violets

** V is for Violets **  
  
Cailan left her to go to war, her foolish golden boy gleaming bright in his shining armor; he came back to her in a white leather bag scarcely bigger than a newborn child.   
  
They had made a proper pyre for him, Alistair told her, in the forest near Ostagar. She was glad of it. She’d never really believed there was anything special about the burning of the dead, that the flames did any more to send one’s soul to the Maker than the old rites of the pagan Alamarri, but Cailan had suffered enough indignities.  
  
(When she turns and finds him standing in the doorway, in Cailan’s armor, she thinks for one short moment he’d come home- but no, it isn’t him at all, too tall and darker-haired.   
  
He bows, and held out the bag of ashes toward her.   
  
“Did you loot his corpse before or after you burned it?” She looks at him, up and down, at everything but his face, at the chestpiece which, though repaired, bears the signs and scars of a crushing blow.   
  
“Neither.” Alistair frowns, his hand still outstretched. “The darkspawn took his armor as trophies. When we killed them, we took it back.”  
  
She reaches out, and takes the ashes. “You needn’t have worn it.”  
  
“An ogre killed Cailan,” he says. “It almost killed me, too, except for some quick knifework and a good healer. Knocked my helmet off, snapped my cuirass in two.”  
  
She’s never seen an ogre, only the etchings Father brought to the war council’s meetings; her eyes closed for a moment, she tries to imagine- its hand closing, its great mouth, all fangs and foul breath. She shudders.   
  
“I lived.” Alistair shrugs. “But my armor was unwearable, and I’m no smith. I’m sorry.” He turns away, looks back over his shoulder as he takes a step away. “I’ll have it cleaned and returned to you.”  
  
She watches him go, holding the little leather bag to her chest, heavy against her heart. “Alistair?”  
  
He pauses.  
  
“Keep it.” She looks down. “He doesn’t need it anymore.”)  
  
She buried Cailan in the royal crypt, and when the war was over she had all the statues Arl Howe had commissioned melted down and used the bronze to build his tomb. Though she no longer wears full mourning as the months pass, especially after she and Alistair wed (it was an ill omen to a marriage, the Grand Cleric said, to have a new bride still dressed as a widow), after every restday service she drapes her head in white silk and visits him.   
  
When she and Cailan married Anora carried white violets in her bridal bouquet, but today the flowers she holds are nearly black.   
  
She’d always loved violets. Mama thought them poorly suited to a garden- “symbols of death and mourning since the days of the Imperium,” she lectured from her almanac- but Anora didn’t care. She grew them next to Mama’s roses in the gardens in Gwaren, and when she and Father left for Denerim she took cuttings along in her little basket.   
  
She brought the roses, too, but she had no talent for them, and they withered and died within a season. The violets were easier; they thrived until the darkspawn came, and then, like everything else in Denerim, they burned.   
  
The following spring, though, they grew again, thick and wild as ever- but dark, a strange deep reddish-black when they once were white and royal purple. The gardener joked that perhaps all the darkspawn blood soaked into the ground and stained them.  
  
Perhaps he’s right. 

Children play in the garden, shrieking and laughing, as she walks the paths toward Cailan’s tomb. As a concession to Alistair (he worries, always, when she walks the city alone) Cauthrien trails behind her, silent and vigilant as always, armed and armored enough to deter all but the boldest foe. She has no need for worry.  
  
Cailan would have approved of the statue that marks his vault. She rests the bouquet at his feet and looks up at him- at  _it_ , only a statue though it looks so like him- for a moment, at the line of his jaw and his bronze eyes staring towards distant foes.   
  
At the corner of her vision she can see Cauthrien, standing just next to Father’s little monument with a pine branch in her hand; when Anora nods she drops the sprig on the marble slab surreptitiously and moves back to the path.   
  
The children are duelling with sticks, now, and one knocks the other to the ground. “Ha! I win.”  
  
The defeated boy scowls. “So what? You’re still stupid.”  
  
“You don’t have to be smart to be a soldier.” The taller boy reaches down, and when Anora chuckles he turns his head and, seeing her, kneels beside his friend. “Your Majesty! Sorry, I-”  
  
She smiles, a little. “You remind me very much of a little boy I used to know.”  
  
“Was he a great soldier, Your Majesty?” The child looks up, wide-eyed.  
  
“He was- he grew to be a great soldier, brave and fierce and strong.”  _But not clever._ An old, familiar ache begins again in her chest, just behind her breastbone, and she breathes out to quell it.   
  
Both boys are kneeling, now; she gestures, and they rise to their feet. “What happened to him? Did he win lots of battles?”  
  
She looks back at Cailan’s statue, her veil catching the breeze and fluttering towards it, toward her foolish golden boy. “He died.”


	23. W is for Warden

** W is for Warden **  
  
“Don’t be silly.” She swats halfheartedly at his chest. “You can’t be a Grey Warden.”  
  
Cailan, half-buried in the heather blanketing the field, laughs and rolls away from her. “Why not? I’ll be king someday, and then I can do whatever I please.”  
  
“That isn’t what being king means.” She has to explain these things to him, of course- he’s only twelve and dreadfully spoiled.   
  
(They share a tutor now, since she’s moved to Denerim with Father for good; at their first lesson together he could barely cipher and held his quill like a scribbling toddler. When he tried to convince her that she was meant to write his essays, too, she asked Father what she ought to do- she knew, of course, that it wasn’t  _ right _ , but he was the prince and her betrothed beside.   
  
Father promised he’d see to it, and at dinner that night he sat with the king, their eyes set firmly on Cailan as Maric sighed and Father, his jaw set in the position that she knows well means there’ll be no arguing with him, locked his hand around Maric’s wrist.  
  
The next day, when the tutor set their lesson, Cailan scowled at her, rubbed his bottom and took up his quill to write.)  
  
“But I want to ride a griffon,” he says. “Fighting darkspawn, swooping down from the sky with sword in hand- it sounds like great fun, doesn’t it?”  
  
She props herself up on one elbow, turning to face him; he waves one hand in the air, slashing at imaginary darkspawn with an invisible blade. “There aren’t any griffons anymore. They’ve all been dead for hundreds of years.”  
  
“Spoilsport.”   
  
“Besides, aren’t the Grey Wardens all criminals or suchlike? I heard they go through the prisons and pick out the cleverest people, make them Wardens instead of hanging them or cutting off their hands.” Anora doesn’t know much about them, of course, only what she’s heard Father say in the few years since their order returned to Ferelden. “Thieves and rapists and murderers- not the most noble of companions for a prince.”  
  
Cailan sits up. “Maybe I’ll get myself arrested, then, when I’m older.” He has purple heather blossoms scattered in his hair. “Then perhaps they’d choose me.”  
  
She laughs, imagining. “How? You’ll be king. Who’d arrest you?”  
  
“I could-” he thinks, scrunching his forehead, “-I could kill someone.”  
  
“Who of course deserved it, as you mete out the King’s Justice.”  
  
“I could steal something valuable.” His chin thrust out stubbornly, he tucks his knees up against his chest. “Or ravish some nobleman’s daughter.”  
  
“Ravish?” She snorts. “I should never have let you borrow my novels- and you’d better not. I’d be terribly cross with you, and I’d bet the girl’s father would be even crosser.”  
  
Cailan flutters his eyelashes at her. “I suppose I can’t do that, then. Father says I must make sure to make you happy.”  
  
She smiles.  
  
“So I suppose I can’t be a Grey Warden.”  
  
“No,” she says, “you can’t.”  
  
***  
  
“I’m sorry if it’s too personal a question,” she says, and holds out a cup of wine to the elf. “But I know very little about the Wardens, and I thought it might help me understand Alistair better. He has such awful-”  
  
“Nightmares?” The Warden reaches out to take the cup. “We all do, though they’re better since the archdemon fell.”  
  
Anora nods. “I’m sorry. They seem terrible.”  
  
“They are.” She drains the goblet with one long sip and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. 


	24. X is for ξενία

**X is for ξενία**  
  
 _ξενία (xenia): generosity and courtesy shown to those who are far from home_  
  
The creature was dying.   
  
It was dying when the soldiers brought it here, broken and bleeding, from the shore of Lake Calenhad. It was a curiosity more than anything, too wounded to pose any sort of threat; shut up in Fort Drakon, it slept and slept as they waited to see if it would wake.   
  
When it did wake, Cailan told her as they walked the long paths through the streets toward the fort (they would have taken the carriage, but she insists on walking, as she always does- it does the people good to see them out together in Denerim, and with so many guards she is never afraid), it started to speak but no one could understand it.   
  
“It seems to be looking for something, or someone, but-” he shrugs. “Even the Chantry scholars can’t translate for it.”  
  
“Have you tried showing it pictures?”  
  
Cailan laughs. “Pictures? Anora, it’s a prisoner of war, not a pantomime actor.”  
  
“I’m aware.” She scowls at him. “But if we know what they wanted, what they were looking for, perhaps we could avoid any future, ah, incursions.”   
  
The word _invasion_ rolls around her mouth, nearly slips from the tip of her tongue. It’s been a whisper in the war room ever since they heard of the sightings- a scant dozen, scouting from the coast down to the lakeshore where they’d finally been penned in and brought down.   
  
But where there was one, or ten, there would likely be more, and the creatures had brought the known world to its knees the last time they’d begun to roam.   
  
“You sound just like your father.” He pauses at the gate; the soldiers there snap to attention and open the heavy doors to the inside of the fort. “I thought he’d strangle me after he learned we'd had it interrogated.”  
  
She lets the doors close behind them before she responds; it does not do to be seen arguing in public. “You had it _tortured_? Cailan!”  
  
“We had to see if it would talk.” He quickens his pace until she can barely stay alongside him. “It might have been pretending not to understand us.”  
  
“And then you’ll send it back, only to have it report that it was imprisoned and worse by the King of Ferelden?” She reaches out to catch at his sleeve, to slow him to a more manageable speed. “It’ll start a war, if they weren’t planning one already.”  
  
At the bottom of the stairs, a crowd of soldiers hovers around a narrow-barred cage.  
  
“Oh, it won’t be going anywhere.” She recognizes Howe’s voice, an oily rasp at the base of her skull, before she sees him. “It’s properly dead now, I think.”  
  
“Truly?” Cailan sighs. “I thought I’d requested only nonlethal methods, ser.”  
  
This part of the fort smells of blood and of the dying. She draws herself up as tall as possible, and covers her mouth and nose with one hand. “I seem to have found myself abstracted to the Imperium, Cailan. I don’t recall that we Fereldans maintained the practice of racking our prisoners of war to death.”  
  
Arl Howe snorts. “Oh, come off your high horse, Your Majesty. It’s only a qunari. It’s not even human.”  
  
“Quoth the Archon to his general, as the history books say, and we all know how well that turned out for them.” She catches a glimpse of it through the bars of the cage- hugely muscled, with curling horns on each side of its head. It is oddly beautiful, in a way, but quite undeniably dead.   
  
Cailan rests his hand on the small of her back. “I’m sorry, Anora. I wouldn’t-”  
  
“Never mind,” she says, and starts for the stairs. “I’ve seen a qunari now. I shall pray I never see another.”


	25. Y is for Yield

**Y is for Yield**  
  
This will end in one of two ways, because there are only two possible endings: a crown on her head, or her head on a spike.   
  
Cailan is dead and the darkspawn are coming; the countryside burns in a wide swath from Ostagar north to Lothering and beyond. The bulk of Cailan’s army- her army, now, with no one left to lead it- lies slaughtered, full four out of five dead in the battle and half of the survivors blight-infected and put to the sword.   
  
Except for Father’s soldiers, of course. Father’s soldiers are hale and hearty, and ring the palace and the city in neat ranks.   
  
The darkspawn march ever northward, but she will need protection sooner, and from another foe.  
  
The last Grey Wardens are coming, Father says, to murder them both as they already murdered Cailan, to usurp her reign and to return Ferelden to Orlesian control. They must be prepared.   
  
“But why, Father?” She stands at the window and looks out over the horizon. “The Grey Wardens, allied with Orlais? Duncan was always a friend to Cailan.”  
  
“And to Maric before that, since he ended their exile.” Father sighs. “I can only imagine that the Orlesians bought his loyalty. Why else would he conscript Maric’s bastard from the Templars, if not to put a puppet king on your throne?”  
  
Anora grips the windowsill until her fingertips go pale. “It isn’t mine! I’m a dowager queen now; I’ll keep my title, perhaps my rooms, and when I die they’ll put my urn next to his. I can’t-”  
  
He turns her around to look at him, one hand on each side of her face. “You must.”  
  
“I can’t, Father. Cailan is dead, and we’ve no fit king to replace him. I cannot fight two wars at the same time.”  
  
Father bends, a little, until his forehead rests against hers (in the way he used to do when she was very small, so many years ago, but in those days he would kneel and she would stand on her tiptoes, balancing her hands against his chest). “Indeed. But I know of a queen who is more than suited to rule, and if she does not fight this usurper she will have no kingdom to defend from the darkspawn.”  
  
She closes her eyes.  
  
“Anora.” His voice fills her ears, drowning out the clatter of boots on the battlements. “Did Cailan make a single decision, in all the years he was king, without consulting you?”  
  
“He never asked me about his whores, I suppose.” She chokes back the laughter that rises, unbidden and inappropriate, and shakes her head. “But the things that mattered... he sought my counsel, always.”  
  
“And now, when you no longer must offer counsel, but govern as queen,” Father releases her, “you doubt yourself? Would you truly yield the power you hold to bastards and Orlesians?”  
  
She opens her eyes. “No, Father."  
  
"Then you agree?"  
  
Anora turns back to the window. "Do what you must. We are at war."


	26. Z is for Zenith

**Z is for Zenith**  
  
There was a time, once, when she would have waited before she disrobed, when she would have listened for the soft clunk of the door-latch and the scrape of the heavy boiler-tubs moving away along the corridor before she settled into the bath.  
  
There was a time when she was younger and less worldly, when she dressed and undressed behind her carved wooden screen (Grandfather made it for her, the last project he finished before he died; she refused to leave it behind in Gwaren and somehow it survived the journey lashed to the top of the luggage cart- blessedly it didn’t rain). Ever since she could remember Mama had kept well-covered except to bathe, which Mama said was right and proper, and Anora had followed suit.   
  
She adjusted to life in Denerim out of necessity.   
  
Her role as Cailan’s betrothed brought as many obligations as privileges, including the constant stream of servants to fetch and carry her things, to draw her bath and haul away her chamber-pot. When her first lady’s maid grew too arthritic to manage- she’d been with the Theirins, she said, since the days of the Rebel Queen- Anora had Erlina promoted from parlor maid. (She  _ was _ Orlesian, after all, and she thought the elf’s skills quite wasted on tidying her desk and bringing in her tea-tray.) They debated for weeks on the protocols of dress.   
  
Twelve years later she and Erlina still argue from time to time, but the old debates are long settled; her modesty is mostly dead after two weddings and a widowing.   
  
Anora still prefers, however, to bathe alone, and when the last servants leave with the water-tubs she waits for the door to close quite completely before she rises from her bed.  
  
Today, though, she can barely move, and when she tries to hobble across the room she regrets her modesty. She manages three steps before she has to lean against her dressing table, legs trembling.   
  
“Erlina?” She calls toward the antechamber, then the study. “Erlina, I need you.”  
  
Her rooms are quiet: no footsteps crossing stone floors, no doors creaking slowly open. She calls out again, louder, more insistent.  
  
Propped against the table, Anora entertains a brief moment of panic. Could this have been planned, part of an attack against her- her guards drawn away, her servants disabled, Alistair caught by surprise in his study and she herself alone, weakened and-  
  
“My lady?” Ser Cauthrien throws open the door from the antechamber, then hurries to her side. “Your Majesty, you shouldn’t be out of bed without help.”  
  
“Don’t lecture me, Cauthrien.” She wrinkles her nose and holds out one hand to the other woman. “I’ve barely been up in days, except to pace or for the maids to change the linens, and now my bath’s getting cold. Help me, won’t you?”  
  
“I- of course, your Majesty, but wouldn’t it be more proper for one of the maids, or Erlina-”  
  
She lets her nightdress fall around her feet, the white linen marred by streaks of blood, and steps out of the garment.   
  
Cauthrien averts her eyes.   
  
“Practically half the palace- including you, if I remember correctly,” Anora takes another step along the table, “saw me naked as my name-day last night. You needn’t look away now.”  
  
“I’m sorry for that, Your Majesty. Mistress Wynne kept calling for more rags, and we’d already torn the sheets and the pillowcases to pieces.” Cauthrien slips her arm around the queen’s shoulders; they straighten, together, and stumble toward the tub. “They were fetching linens from the laundry, but you were still bleeding, and- well, it wasn’t the first time I’ve made bandages from underclothes.”  
  
Everything aches- her back, her legs, her belly- and after standing for more than a moment she feels faint but keeps moving.  _Only a few steps more._ “I lived, Cauthrien. I won’t begrudge you the loss of a chemise. They’ll all need to be burned, I think.” She looks backward at the bed, at the dress on the floor. “Blood does stain so.”   
  
“It was a near thing, my lady.”   
  
“So Wynne said. If she and Mahariel had been away-” (but they weren’t, thank the Maker- and in the end, after all the herbs and potions and their hands on her belly and inside her, the rush of blood finally slowed.)  
  
The knight nods grimly. “I know, my lady. I’ve seen my share of chirurgeon’s tents.” Cauthrien bends and lifts her easily off her feet, setting her gently into the wooden bath.  
  
The hot water starts its work. Her cramping back relaxes a bit; Anora lets her hair down from the little linen cap and ducks beneath the surface, rubbing at her face, until she can hold her breath no longer. “Mm. Thank you, Cauthrien.”  
  
“You’re welcome, Your Majesty.” She smiles. “Shall I stay? You may need me again.”  
  
“Please do.” Anora goes to work with the scrub brush, her thighs and hips and, Maker bless it, even her hair flecked with dried blood. “It’s funny, isn’t it, that after everything that’s happened this is how I’ll be remembered?”  
  
Cauthrien’s taken a seat in one of the chairs near the door. “I’m not sure I understand.”  
  
She smiles wryly. “After the Blight, and the war, and Cailan, and Father- in a hundred years, all the history books will say about me is  _ Anora Theirin, née mac Tir, queen to Cailan I. No issue. Queen to Alistair I, had issue _ _._ ”   
  
“I doubt that very much, my lady.”  
  
“I suppose that sounded bitterer than I meant it.” She slouches down, letting the water cover her to the chin. “It’s what queens are meant for, after all- I only wish Father had been alive to see her.”  
  
Somewhere in the corridor, a child is crying, nearer and nearer-  _ her child _ , she realizes, and her belly cramps at the sound of it. A moment later Erlina comes running into the room, her hair disheveled, a blanket-wrapped squalling bundle in her arms.  
  
“I’m so sorry, Your Majesty,” the elf pants. “I meant to fetch your tea, then His Majesty wanted to see the child, then the wet nurse was nowhere to be found and she was crying and I didn’t know-”  
  
“Give her to me, Erlina.” She sits up straighter in the tub, the water lapping at her stomach. “I’ll see to it myself.”  
  
Erlina’s eyes widen. “But-”  
  
She holds out her hands.   
  
Erlina unwraps the layers of blankets (Cauthrien takes each one and folds it neatly, in a little pile on her dressing-table), unfastens the little white gown and the pinned diaper, and ever so cautiously sets the still-crying infant in Anora’s arms.   
  
“Good morning, little princess.” She fumbles a little, her hands damp and her skin slick with water, but she manages well enough; her daughter turns her head, mouth open, nuzzling at Anora’s breast. “I’ve been waiting a very long time for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's read this, whether from the beginning or later on. All of your support and feedback helped me keep working, even when I couldn't find the words.


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